


tea leaves and crumbs

by Angyie



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Literal Sleeping Together, Multi, Platonic Cuddling, everyone loves mercedes and mercedes loves everyone, faerghus' education sucks what can I say, mercedes is a great multi faced character and you will like her, mostly platonic but if you want to ship the whole bunch you can, the blue lions cuddle in a pile and sleep that's it that's the fic, they just love each other so much man, trying to deal with trauma and loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:53:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22054354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angyie/pseuds/Angyie
Summary: “White magic, it directs life, mends it, wills it to stand again. It’s warm, can you feel it, dear?” Her mother had once said. “Wield with great care, because you will be a beacon of comfort when the fight brings the cold, attracting both your friends and your foes.”A decade and a bit more had to pass before Mercedes could grasp the meaning of her mother’s words: in the battlefield, thieves and Imperial soldiers alike spotted the staff in her hands and converged towards her to stop her magic from reaching her allies forever. Her friends, they all gravitated towards her, limping and wincing, circling around her with their shields, as she would call upon the flow of the ether around her and close their wounds.Or, the Blue Lions through the years, gravitating towards each other in this cold harsh world, and how Mercedes' room becomes the headquarter for a big cuddling pile.(Based on how Mercedes' room has multiple chairs put together in a circle.)
Relationships: Blue Lions Students - Relationship, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Blue Lions Students, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Mercedes von Martritz, Mercedes von Martritz & Blue Lions Students
Comments: 11
Kudos: 79





	tea leaves and crumbs

**Author's Note:**

> Knock on my door and I shall give you the Blue Lions found family feels you're looking for, my friends.
> 
> Mostly this was meant to be an entire Mercedes character study, but it became That and it got weaved into found family blue lions also teenagers being really fucking dumb but then being forced to grow up too fast, and also Faerghus’ fucked up education about trauma, sins and soldiers and war and Dimitri being human again i love you so much my child my son my everything
> 
> One more thing, English isn't my first language, so mistakes may happen! Though, big thanks to my good friend [green_piggy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_piggy/pseuds/green_piggy) who helps me a lot with the English part of my work, go check out their stuff!

_Her fingertips were always warm when her mother clasped her hands with hers, teaching her how to feel the flow of magic under her skin. In her mind, they felt like a lighthouse amidst a storm, or an small oil lamp on her bedside attracting a moth looking for respite._

_“White magic, it directs life, mends it, wills it to stand again. It’s warm, can you feel it, dear?” Her mother had once said._

_“Like the pies you make, mommy?”_

_A laugh. “Just like that, dear. Wield with great care, because you will be a beacon of comfort when the fight brings the cold, attracting both your friends and your foes.”_

_A decade and a bit more had to pass before Mercedes could grasp the meaning of her mother’s words: in the battlefield, thieves and Imperial soldiers alike spotted the staff in her hands and converged towards her to stop her magic from reaching her allies forever. Her friends, they all gravitated towards her, limping and wincing, circling around her with their shields, as she would call upon the flow of the ether around her and close their wounds._

_It dawned on her one day, without a warning, that being in and out of the battlefield changed little._

_Mercedes collected strays and broken things that found their way to her, picked them up to offer them her home, passed her fingers over the wounds, and set them free and fixed again._

  
  


.

  
  


Her fingers worked out the knot in her shawl, letting it slip from her grasp to rest on the back of her desk chair. She did the same for the ribbon holding her thick hair, and it fell around her shoulders as she sighed away the fatigue from the day.

Cleaning duty was entertaining, but her muscles would be sore in the morning.

Her walk back to her room was a quiet one. The sun had set down long ago by now, and the winter was fast approaching, making everyone flee inside to look for some warmth. The few guards stationed inside waved her good night as she passed by them, but all her fellow students already seemed to be cooped up in their rooms. Well, to be fair, most of her neighbors were fairly quiet - she couldn’t say the same for some of the boys upstairs, from her experience.

She had just finished changing to her nightwear when a knock on her door unexpectedly broke the monotony of the night.

“Annie? Are you alright?”

Her best friend stood in the doorway, without her trademark pigtails; her hair looked wavy, unruly, a bit like her. She was looking down at her feet, draped in robes over her nightwear to face the chilling weather. She shuffled on her feet a bit, slightly looking up at Mercedes with an apologetic pout.

“Sorry, it’s just… I can’t sleep and I think my window is broken. I can’t close it or fix it and it’s getting super cold. Do you mind if I stay here for a bit? I’ll get it fixed tomorrow morning, I’ll ask the staff but… You know…”

Mercedes let out a chuckle and smiled. “Of course, you can. My door is always open for you.”

She stepped aside, closing the door when Annette rushed in with a full body shiver. “Geez, the winter is going to be awful if it’s already like this. I thought it was cold only at home, not all over Fódlan,” she said.

“I can only imagine how it is for all the other students who aren’t from the Kingdom,” Mercedes joked.

Annette froze - so to speak. “Brrr. Don’t even wanna think about it.”

“Shall I make some tea to warm you, dear?”

“Oh no, don’t bother, I ha-- and you’re already making it. You know what, suit yourself, Mercie,” Annette continued to pout, letting herself fall on her best friend’s bed. The mattress protested a bit under the strain, making her bounce up.

Mercedes smiled knowingly, already pushing a tiny, intricately decorated cup in the hollow of her hands. With care not to spill anything, covering her sheets with an old set of napkins, she set down a tray full of boiling water and sweets on her bed, gracefully sitting with her legs swaying aside.

“Thanks, Mercie. Pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to get one hour of sleep in my room in the state it is now… But I won’t stay too long, don’t worry, you need your beauty sleep.”

Gently tapping her cup with her spoon, Mercedes blew off the steam of her tea and swallowed a sip or two. “Why don’t you stay here for the night?”

“The whole night? Naaaah… It’s fine, I can manage. Do we even have a curfew or something? I’m not even sure we’re allowed to share rooms,” was the muffled reply that came out in between half bitten biscuits.

“Really? I wouldn’t mind. And the staff won’t notice, and I don’t think they will mind. After all, I have cooking duty tomorrow and I always walk around the monastery with a few extras for the knights.”

Annette frowned, torn between disbelief and amusement. “You… You can’t just coerce the knights, Mercie.”

“Who said anything about corruption?” Mercedes’ smile grew as she set down her teacup and innocently brushed her hands over the hair falling around her shoulders. “I just happen to give a few sweets and biscuits to everyone every Thursday, that’s all.”

Annie snorted. “Terrifying as always, Mercie. But… Thanks.”

And then, Annette’s shoulders seemed to deflate. Tension flew out of her muscles like the rising steam of the tea warming her hands, warding away cold and worries altogether. The candles were shining bright all around the room, an open book filled with healing runes forgotten aside on the desk. A few snowflakes dared to wander against the glass of the window and promptly melted away upon reaching and touching the little shield of love and faith Mercedes had filled her room with.

  
  


.

  
  


Twice was still a coincidence, surely?

At the time, those were her thoughts, but with time, Mercedes will know that it was absurd to think as such.

Yet, all the same, within a few weeks, it was another knock on her door later during the night that interrupted the intricate runes she was tracing in her books, trying to feel the magic like her mother had taught her.

The second she opened the door, her two impromptu guests - well, one, at least - assaulted her ears with apologies.

“I’m so terribly sorry to disturb you at this hour, Mercedes, I just didn’t know what else to do, but you see, it’s raining so terribly tonight and I was finishing my cleaning duties in the mess hall and as I was going back to my room, I found this little buddy here and I went to Dedue first, you know, he’s my neighbour, but he said that--”

“I said,” the man himself interjected, letting Ashe take a terribly great breath of air. “That perhaps you’d be more suited than me with helping Ashe’s little friend here. I’m afraid I know very little of the arts of healing.” And indeed, in Ashe’s arms, a tiny ball of fur was curled up against his chest. Soaked to the bone and trembling, Mercedes thought she recognized itas oneone of the cats of the monastery. A leg sat at an awkward angle.

“Oh, poor little thing, let’s get him inside, shall we?” Mercedes promptly ushered the mismatched group inside, summoning a blanket out of seemingly nowhere to Ashe’s astonishment, firmly wrapping up the poor animal within a tiny nest.

As the flow of faithful magic flew from the tips of her fingers, the door behind her opened again without a warning, and Annette’s head comically popped inside the room with an inquisitive look. “I heard a meow. There is a cat in here, isn’t there?”

As such, the animal seemed perfectly content to spend the rest of the night navigating between Ashe’s and Annette’s arms over and over.

“My apologies again, Miss Mercedes, for interrupting your night. That shall not happen again,” Dedue bashfully, but sternly, said to her from the other end of the room.

Mercedes chuckled, and looked up through the thick strands of hair falling over her forehead to look into Dedue’s shy eyes. As gentle as he was, she put her hand over the crook of his elbow in a reassuring hold. “It is of no bother, I’m happy to provide the help you need. My door is always open, for anyone.”

“... Still, I feel like I am intruding. I shall repay this back to you shortly, as a thank you.”

The “no need” answer died on her lips with a smile. Dedue was quite the stubborn one, she had quickly found out.

“You… You are a bit different from most of the students here, if you would allow me to say such things. I find that everyone is drawn to you for comfort,” was Dedue’s attempt at conversation.

“I do collect strays, I suppose,” Mercedes said, her eyes fixated on her joined hands in her lap. Gently, she squeezed her fingers - a mimic of a prayer. “Perhaps one day, the one I’m looking for will get home,” was but a whisper.

“... I see.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Dedue,” Mercedes chuckled with genuine amusement. “My concerns are not as deep as you think they are.”

“I understand,” and as their eyes crossed, it seemed like he did. So was the heavy and self afflicted burden of the caretaker. “I suppose we can always look after each other, should we tire in our task.”

“Now, that sounds like a lovely idea, Dedue.”

And if Ashe, Annette and Dedue, the resident Blue Lions of the lower floor, weekly found themselves in Mercedes’ room, surely it was a coincidence.

  
  


.

  
  


Until one day, another knock on the door disturbed their cozy reunions.

Mercedes was half surprised to see Ingrid, Felix and Sylvain all lined up before her door, all shivering from the cold. Felix pointed a thumb towards Sylvain, looking disinterested. “His window is broken and he keeps whining he’s too cold to sleep there.”

“Hey man, that’s not what we agreed to say--”

“Also, _wow,_ his window is broken and suddenly we’re _all_ here, great segway.”

“ _Well_ I don’t fucking know, that’s what Annette told me she had bullshitted when she--”

“Don’t sell my secrets, you jerk!” came the cry from inside.

“Then don’t tell them to _me_!” Felix half yelled back from outside. “Anyway. Can we come in, yes or no, or I’m going back to sleep.”

“Yeah, can we join the sleepover secret club?” Sylvain asked, and his eagerness would have looked like his usual troublemaker demeanor if a couple hearts-to-hearts hadn’t happened throughout the year.

“What about His Highness, shouldn’t we invite him too?” Ashe poked his head out from inside, his nose perking out from over Mercedes’ shoulder.

“Oh, don’t worry, his royal assness - _what_ , it’s _funny_ , I’m funny - is here,” and surely, behind the three nobles, the crown prince appeared to be hiding a few feet in the back, leaning against the wooden column near the small set of stairs. Wrapped up in an azure blanket all the way to his nose, his face went an interesting shade of pink upon attention being brought to him.

“I think his window is broken for real,” Sylvain continued, not the least disturbed. “I think he’s getting sick or something.” A pause. “Not that our windows are not broken. They are, totally are, soooo destroyed, it’s like His Highness tried to open them and then, bam--”

Ingrid coughed, interrupting the tirade. From behind Mercedes, a large, looming presence told her Dedue had stood up, quickly assessing for himself Dimitri’s state, and he seemed satisfied enough with what he was seeing.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t overstay our welcome in Miss Mercedes’ room after all, she needs to get her own rest and we are of no help for that,” he finally said, still eyeing Dimitri.

With that, all eyes fell on her, as it quickly dawned on her it was indeed _her_ room and as such, the decision was hers. In her mind, there were many past memories of her mother’s wisdom tangled together, telling her to make sure she could stay afloat before helping others through a snow sea. Yet, none of this mattered, because all she saw on her doorway were scared kids seeking refuge.

More than that, they were as dear to her as Emile had been, a long time ago, before she lost it all.

“Well, it is a cold night, why don’t you all come inside to warm you up? Even you, Dimitri.”

A collective sigh of relief flooded over all of their shoulders as she stepped aside and Felix kicked Sylvain in the knees to push him inside. _(“Ow!”)_

“Hurry up before the guards ground us over staying past curfew, none of us should be here in the first place!” Annette half yelled half whispered from her perch on Mercedes’ bed.

“There’s a curfew?!”

“They have no legal authority over me, I’d like to see them try,” Sylvain snickered, shamelessly already making himself feel at home by rearranging the pillows everyone had brought earlier in the night.

“Pretty sure they do.”

“It’s alright, we can just say it’s all Dimitri’s fault and here you go, royal privileges will get us out of trouble.”

“It sounds very amusing Sylvain, but I’d prefer not to abuse such a notion--”

“You’re no fun.”

“Thank you, Mercedes,” Ingrid took hold of one of her hands within hers and gently squeezed. Her gaze slipped to Dimitri’s form still wrapped up in his blanket all the way of the lower half of his face, his knees folded against his chest beneath it in a way that seemed almost childish. While Annette was busy trying to warm him up, starting a fight with another of Mercedes’ blankets that looked bigger than the small woman was in the process, the prince grabbed one end of the wool and let it fall around his and Dedue’s shoulders. Dedue’s surprise was ignored with a stubborn look directed at everything in the room but the man himself.

“His Highness… He didn’t want to come. Had it not been for Felix, he would have been… Well, his sleep is the most restless out of all of us. I think… It was going to be a bad night for all of us, had you not welcomed us inside,” Ingrid managed to let out, and she went to sit next to Ashe.

Only then it dawned on Mercedes that this very night, a few years ago, Faerghus’ snow was painted red, and all of their lives broke apart into tiny little pieces hidden underneath false pretenses and knightly ideals.

With a heavy sigh, she took one last look at the outside world - a clear sky, an uneventful night, a chilly, familiar wind that came from the north - and closed the door. It was her own little pocket of a world here, a sacred ground she had to thank the Goddess for and as long as she lived, her family could seek asylum at her door.

On her chest of drawers, she lifted the napkin from the wicker basket of sweets and treats she had baked the day before, and poured out the water she had boiled a dozen minutes or so before into a set of eight teacups adorned with azure sarcodes and hydrangeas. A gift from her mother before she departed for the monastery, a wish that she could one day invite as many guests to her self built haven for a farewell.

The cacophony of bickering behind her was all that was needed for a laugh to burst out of her, and with a flicker of a wrist, the tears that had formed at the corner of her eyes were gone.

_I will protect my family, all for you, Emile, I promise._

(A tea set of eight for a new family to fill the void the one she had lost had left in her chest.)

“We do appear to have one slight problem everyone, we don’t have enough chairs.”

“Do you think we could knock on Lysithea’s door and tell her we need her chair?”

“... Let’s not do that, Sylvain.”

“Why is it that everything you do is scandalous?”

“Hey now, that’s just rude. I am who I am. Okay, new idea, Annette, sit on Felix, that’ll save some room.”

_“Absolutely not.”_

_“Are you out of your mind?”_

_“If anything, I can stay standing up, it’s not bothering me--”_

_“You better stay sitting on that bed, Dedue, or I swear-”_

_“Why don’t we all calm down and squeeze up a little bit on the bed--”_

_“Why don’t_ you _calm down?”_

_“You’re the only one yelling Felix, sit down my dude.”_

_“Alright, that’s it, I had enough, both of you, you’re sitting on the floor.”_

_“I’m not sitting next to him.”_

_“Either that or you sit on the bed next to Dimitri, your choice, little man.”_

_“... Fine.”_

_“Annette, isn’t there a chair in your room, why didn’t we think of that sooner?”_

_“... I’m not going back outside, it’s so cold and I’ve tucked my feet under His Highness’ legs and he’s_ super _warm.”_

_“I could go get it, that’s no trouble.”_

_“Don’t you dare move, Your Highness, or I swear on the Goddess--”_

_“Ashe, can you get the--”_

The door creaked open with a sinister sound. Gently, she pried it open, and for the first moment in a long time, the light filtered through the doorway, as the window on the other side had long since been obstructed by debris.

As she moved inside, rocks and gravel scraped against the floor alongside her heel, lifting a bit of the heavy coat of dust that had taken the room prisoner.

The basket hadn’t moved from the last time she left her room in a hurry, her clothes stuffed in a cloak as they fled north from the Imperial troops. Empty, the dust had taken its hold on the place. On the desk, the set of teacups and the teapot were dull despite the rays of light, the paint hiding under a layer of dirt and grim.

With shaking hands, she managed to still them as she grabbed the back of one of the three chairs put in a small circle at the center of the room. Gently, she pushed against it, feeling the piece of furniture precariously sway back and forth. A rhythm settled in, _thud_ , _thud_ , _thud,_ the chair against the floor, as her gaze went over the bare room.

Seeing things that were not there, hearing things that were not there, Mercedes’ memories projected earnest laughs, hysterical giggles, sleepy hums of delight around warm sweets. Timid smiles and tearfully hidden gratitude and love and unsaid embraces that existed all the same.

The foot of the chair bumped against the wooden plank of the floor with a final dull sound in the silence.  
  


. . .

  
  
  


_As the ground shakes from one end of the continent to another under the trained footsteps of Imperial soldiers walking to their monastery, they gather without a word in Mercedes’ room. A hand touching a wrist, an ankle against a thigh, an inelegant pile of limbs and fright and shelter._

_The room has always been too narrow for all of them, but now it feels as colossal and cold as the cathedral once one piece of the intricate puzzle, the one that fits on Sylvain’s calves and against Dedue’s back, has gone missing. The frigid wind slithers in the prince shaped hole of their chain._

_Dimitri doesn’t appear to even realize they are still here, after Edelgard left._

_(It’s hard to get warm, that night.)_

  
  
  


. . .

  
  
  


_Turns out, if one piece falls apart, the rest is soon assured to follow._

  
  
  


. . .

  
  
  


_Those are long five years to spend with a family half scattered, half dead._

  
  
  


. . .

  
  
  


_Mother… I have failed yet again._

  
  


_. . ._

  
  


_Keep the light bright and shining, my dear. They will find it piercing amidst the darkness, and carve their way back to your haven._

A lighthouse in the storm.

. . .

  
  


The march back to Garreg Mach had been a long one all the way back from Fhirdiad. After a briefing in the war room that seemed too simple after the colossal victory that had been _freeing their home_ , the moment their king - even though he had refused the throne for now, not until the war was over - dismissed them, it was as if the omniscient puppet master over their heads had waved them off and left, their strings without any tension to keep them standing.

At her side, Annette seemed very intent on sleeping right here right now, while at the very end of the table, Dimitri and Dedue were leaning towards each other, engrossed in hushed whispers of a conversation, with concerned looks whose cipher was a well kept secret to them.

Ingrid, Felix, Ashe and Sylvain seemed ready to leave to their own devices, and Mercedes, all foolish she knew she was, the adrenaline of Fhirdiad’s freedom still flowing through her veins, saw an opportunity.

“Come on everyone,” she clapped twice to call their attention, which had the nefarious effect of making everyone look more alert than they ought to be, ready to spring under orders. She tried not to be disturbed by it: “Armors and everything too stiff off, let’s get you all comfortable, shall we?”

It was a terrible concert of clanking noises, plates and curves falling against the cobblestones in disharmony, but it was delightful all the same to see Ingrid lazily stretch out like a cat, shaking off battle fatigue, while Sylvain was sent sprawling over the floor in his struggling attempts to help Ashe take off his boots, completely stuck to his clothes through overly thick dry mud. That, at least, had the reward to wake up Annette and make her laugh until her lungs couldn’t take it, poking at Sylvain’s bruised hips, who seemed perfectly content on staying with his back against the floor. One by one, the former Blue Lions gathered their belongings, and driven by an old routine despite their tired brains unable to connect all the dots, their feet found by themselves the way to Mercedes’ now inhabited room.

Aside, without surprise, one had remained unmoving the entire ordeal.

“Dimitri?”

The prince - or perhaps calling him the boy was a more correct way of putting it - reacted a few seconds too late for it to look natural. As if taken prisoner by the thoughts in his own head, anyone talking directly to him seemed like a distant memory, a rusted machine forgotten by the ages whose lever couldn’t be pulled anymore. He looked lost, unaware of what he was supposed to do with Mercedes’ reassuring smile as she patiently waited for something he couldn’t pinpoint.

Until finally, it clicked - but the seconds it took to shake off the haunted veil over his eyes had already passed and done their damage as they left. Dimitri, abashed, opened his mouth and closed it twice quickly, his gaze traveling alongside Mercedes’ jaw but never quite going up.

“Mercedes, I… Of course, my apologies,” he said with a heavy sigh. What ought to be a simple request for soldiers in their downtime outright resembled some kind of punishment now.

“Would you prefer to spend the evening alone? I’d hate to push you to do something you don’t want to, but I’m sure everyone would be saddened not to have you with us.”

Wordlessly, Dimitri shook his head in refusal, although the hesitance did not leave his eye. Even in the confined and secured walls of the monastery, he seemed ready to lunge, his fingers periodically closing in on a pole that wasn’t there. Yet, in all the weeks they had reunited with him, she had yet to see fear over his features in the battlefield in the way it had settled ever since he took unsure, fearful steps towards them. Ready to strike back and to accept it at the same time if they ever decided to raise a weapon towards him, no matter the form it took.

As such, it wasn’t that hard to put the clues together.

“If it’s easier for you, you don’t have to take off all of your armor plates,” Mercedes gently added.

“Ah, no, that wouldn’t do. I’d hate to stain anything in your room,” Dimitri immediately added, startled, and Mercedes couldn’t decide whether it was hope or pity that built up in her chest upon having a man that was closer to a beast than to a king, that she had seen rip limbs apart without care, worry about whether the inevitable dirt of his boots would disturb the pristine state of her sheets.

After the chilling sensation of blood spilled in the battlefield covering her from head to toe, _by her own hands_ , it seemed so ridiculous that she couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle.

“That is nothing to worry about, I assure you,” she said, hiding her playful smile behind her fingers. “If anything, we can always clean it up afterwards, how does that sound?”

Dimitri looked like he was clearly struggling with the idea of the possibility to fix up your own mistakes, and Mercedes herself had her limits with what she could handle. Without dropping her reassurance over her face, she turned around to look at the jovial group gathered at the doorway of the war room in the hallway, until she caught Dedue’s attention away from a conversation he was having with a very excited Ashe.

Thank the Goddess herself for the blessing that was Dedue in their lives, for she feared they wouldn’t have managed to keep the tiny sparks of what was left of Dimitri ablaze.

Dedue caught on immediately. He seemed to sigh, politely telling Ashe to get to their improvised nest while a medley of pure affection and concern waved over his eyes. He marched up the stairs slowly, as if assessing if Dimitri needed him or not.

And indeed, the boy did, as nothing but relief was entirely visible, all defenses and walls crumbling down, when Dedue approached. A gloved hand seemed to reach forward to grasp his own like an anchor, yet it closed its fingers, drawing back towards his waist - _guilty, not allowed._

Dedue took a few steps more, nodded in gratitude to Mercedes. _“I’ll take it from here”_ was unsaid, but she smiled knowingly nonetheless and walked to her room before she could find it in ruins like a meteor spell had found its way inside - so was the effect her dear friends seemed to have on the world when put together in a single room. They had shared a classroom for a year, she would know.

What she found was something akin to the lively, nonsensical chat they used to have here, but the toll of the years and the war was visible. None of them had decided to sit down, not even on her bed. They stood all around the room against the wall, arms crossed, as if waiting for her, and perhaps that shouldn’t tug that painfully on her heart.

“Oh my, we won’t have enough chairs for everyone, that won’t do!” she exclaimed to the assistance and to no one in particular. Always eager, Ashe and Annette sprung to life, and quickly exited for their fantastic fetch quest for sitting furniture. They came back with loud swear words - from Annie at the very least - and a few chairs that had seemed to give a fight in the journey, as she looked fed up and almost threw the three she had stacked together inside. Ashe, bringing his own, quickly picked them up as Ingrid was already putting them in a circle around the bed.

Just like that, it seemed like the glass mirror that had grown and grown between their younger years and today shattered, and they gathered, sprawled over her furniture without the grace of protocol and battle postures.

The conversation jolted to a stop and Mercedes needn’t to look up to know Dimitri stood at the doorway, not quite knowing how to _be_ while being so vulnerable. His massive dark armor was gone, replaced by simple, more comfortable everyday wear. It did not escape her keen eyes that the faint outline of a dagger could be seen underneath the white shirt around the waist, nor that both calves and waist were covered in protective leather that had the pretension to be a fashion choice, but fooled no one.

“Your Highness, I’ve kept you a spot from Sylvain’s spider legs,” Ashe broke the slight tension in a very Ashe way _(“HEY!”)_ , patting a spot on the bed next to him.

“... Thank you, Ashe, that is very kind of you,” was the answer and everyone took one more relaxed breath.

Dedue took the last chair near the bed, and suddenly, with a circle complete, Mercedes could almost pretend the past five years had been a mirage in her dreams.

The only thing missing? _“Biscuits, warm tea and a thoughtless conversation, those are the best weapons in your arsenal to chase the clouds away, my angel,”_ in her mother’s words.

“No boots on my bed, Sylvain,” she warned without looking away from her tea leaves on her chest of drawers, as soon as she had turned around from their intimate circle.

Behind her, she heard a snort - Annie - followed by a slight cry of protest - the culprit himself. Perhaps from a kick in a shin or an elbow in the ribs - Ingrid, doubtlessly. She needn’t turn around to know that Sylvain was pouting, unable to stretch those inhumanly long legs of his on the side where her bed was, for Dimitri was sitting right in front of him and they were all aware of his newfound issues with boundaries.

(Or maybe there had always been there, lingering, and someone started a war, reached into his heart and ripped out everything that slumbered in the dark to let it flourish out there in the open, and it was just searching for home now.)

And Dimitri looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but here, flanked by Ashe on one side, Annette on the other.

There would be no war in her own sanctuary, Mercedes swore to herself.

She had a tiny stool she precariously put the tea set on, in the center of the room. Everyone mumbled a thanks as they wrapped their hands against the cups, quite literally shaking off the cold from their limbs.

She had to push a cup through Dimitri’s trembling hands as he was once more lost to reality once their eyes weren’t on him, but that was alright.

Someone started their favorite subject again - _Sylvain group bullying_ \- and it was as if nothing had happened.

Perhaps there was a strain in Ingrid and Felix’s eyes that wasn’t here before, as if they had failed their self imposed duties and as such deserved no peace of mind. Perhaps there was a newfound desperation in Sylvain’s, the despair of a man who only had his friends and nothing else, and had lost too many of them on the way. Perhaps Annette and Ashe’s heads were sagging with the weight of the guilt of the sacrifices that were made.

And perhaps Dimitri was even more silent than Dedue was, his mind still trapped in a dreamlike world invisible to them, but every word they sometimes threw in the fray was treated as a newfound treasure from two men they thought to be dead over and over.

And perhaps she was reading too much into how after a few hours, Dimitri’s legs stretched, inch by inch, until the sole of his boots bumped against Felix’s - His Highness didn’t seem to notice, but the swordsman’s piercing eyes did. For a moment Mercedes feared the delicate harmony would be broken, yet Felix shrugged and leaned into the touch, his attention going back to the conversation. Perhaps indeed her hopes were twisting reality when in the corner of her vision, she saw Dedue tease a pouting Annette in a way he would have never dared before the hardships of war, like he was fulfilling a part of that strange family of theirs.

Perhaps she was losing herself in memories, but Sylvain’s over the top laughs at Dimitri’s awkward attempt at a joke sounded like his boisterous laughter when they discovered that Ashe was torn between his love for cinnamon and the curse of allergies five long years ago. Ingrid looked the same when she gently patted Annette’s back when she stuffed her cheeks with biscuits until she couldn’t breathe and the lines around Felix’s eyes almost disappeared under the light of the candles.

Perhaps she was fooling herself, as if blood didn’t stain their hands and the enemy’s both, and their home was no more and the Empire ready to destroy the tiny bits of what they had left at the gates of the monastery.

Perhaps it was.

They sat down in a circle, in a room too tiny to welcome them all comfortably, their limbs intertwined in each other, until it became a sore pain in their muscles. No one moved though, sleep taking a hold of them and before closing her eyes, her head resting on Sylvain’s shoulder, she could see an already out cold Dimitri on her bed, leaned against Felix’s shoulder and chest, as himself was resting against the wall. Annette had found a way to curl up and wedge herself between both of them. To her left, she could guess Ingrid and Ashe were both borrowing one of Dedue’s shoulders while Ingrid had folded her legs over Sylvain’s lap. 

Ashe’s hand was reaching towards Dimitri’s ankle, and Felix cautiously but sleepily opened one eye, letting it wander over all of them before meeting hers. An understanding passed silently between them and they soon joined their family into slumber, a comfort in the knowledge that if one of them was to disappear, their clumsy chain of touch, sleeping half sitting in rough wooden chairs in a way that would surely gift them with terrible cramps in the morning, they would know.

Perhaps it was all foolishness.

It was home, awkward and loving, but it was home nonetheless.

. .

  
  


_(The war is over, Emile is dead, and perhaps it’s not her room, but once the calm settles over the taken Imperial capital, they all find a room in the palace, with the biggest bed most of them had ever seen and that looked like it didn’t belong to anyone, and they settle on it all together, armors and weapons set aside._

_Dimitri and Mercedes lie in the center of their embrace, hands linked, with a mournful wail from deep within their chests that finds its way to the world, and a thought for siblings lost to war.)_

  
  


. . .

  
  


The cottage was nothing grandiose, perched atop a hill slightly off center of the capital city. A knock resonated against the wooden door one chilly morning before the sun had even showed its face, although it did not wake any of the children sleeping in the orphanage. Instead, the door opened with a slight creak and a woman with one or two tint of greying hair stepped aside with a knowing smile, while the scent of steam and sugar spread itself outside.

“Professor, come on in.”

Shrugging off their cloak, Byleth stepped inside, taking in the comforting sight of a modest kitchen already running. They almost laughed; on the table at the center, two cups of tea were already set, waiting.

“I cannot stay for too long, the Almyran delegation should be here at any moment now. I won’t have any respite for months after that,” they sighed.

“You will always find a place to rest here, and I assure you no one will find you,” Mercedes said, drawing out a chair for them.

“Oh, as if everyone else doesn’t disappear from the capital every once and awhile?”

“Well, we better keep that secret between you and me,” Mercedes winked, a finger knowingly raised against her lips.

“You should come by the palace and the monastery more often. Everyone keeps asking Dimitri when you are supposed to be back. And I suspect he doesn’t ask the same question because he’s the one in charge so he’s the one supposed to know. You know how he is.”

Mercedes chuckled as she carefully poured boiled water in the porcelain cups before sitting down. “Oh, you flatter me, but I doubt they need the runner of an orphanage on the outskirt of town to run a continent.”

Byleth seemed to hesitate, only to decide on a simple shrug. “You’d be surprised. What’s the aftertaste I’m getting with those?” they asked, turning a biscuit between their fingers.

“Mint. A touch of my mother’s magic in the kitchen at home during the rougher winters of Faerghus. She used to say a slight touch of frost on the palate mixed with warm tea was the best cure to any disease.”

“Smart woman.”

Above their heads and over the landscape, the sky, layer by layer, went from bloody red to balming orange and silky pink. All they needed was to take the sight in, around a small table in the still silent cottage before children and country were to awake. 

“You know, you should give yourself a bit more credit, Mercedes,” Byleth blurted out out of the blue after a stretch of silence. “A tower can grow and reach the gardens of the Goddess up there, but if the base breaks, everything will fall and shatter upon impact.”

“Don’t be mistaken, Professor,” she laughed. “I have no claims to understand the long term consequences of a war, or whatever the Goddess has prepared for us in the future. I am not set on the same important paths that His Majesty or even you are. Nothing I do is that well thought out. In the end, I have grown to be a soldier just like any other, and I am trying to mend the pain I have given to the people on the other side with what I am doing now.”

She looked up, the sight of the morning sun of the winter over the plains of a rebirthed land warming her bones.

“All I offer is a bit of tea leaves and crumbs.”

Byleth, after a long pause, mouth slightly agape in a stunned silence, left out a chuckle and took one more sip of their tea, and that was the end of that conversation.

.

In the evening, in a week, in a month, in a decade and more, Mercedes had a burning faith in her soul that one by one, they would knock at her door, the carefree laughs of the ghosts of their youth still with them as they would stubbornly sprawl over pillows and chairs in a room too small for them, the crown and the scars forgotten for but a brief moment that would be granted to them.

She knows it as much as she knows her mother’s recipe by heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I yeet one fic in the void every six moons and leave. But more seriously, any comments or kudos are deeply appreciated, it keeps your local writers going!
> 
> I really like the idea of a character that knows they're not very smart in terms of knowledge and such, but instead they're really Emotionally smart. Mercedes is a very multiple dimensional character if you're willing to look into it, but I think like any other Faerghus character that 'war is a sinful business' mentality gets to her as well, but with her mother's upbringing and her position as the caretaker/healer as well as the fact that she's slightly older, makes her very interesting. Hopefully I managed to carry that well!
> 
> Maybe I'll turn this into a series, character study and blue lions found family stuff is all I have to provide. Stay tuned! 
> 
> You can also find me on twitter [@vibraniiumstars](https://twitter.com/vibraniiumstars)
> 
> Happy new year everyone!


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